Tech blogger Robert Scoble Kytes interview with Paulo Coelho

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, tech blogger and Fast Company.TV managing director Robert Scoble Kyted a great interview with world famous author, Paulo Coelho and TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington.

As many of you know, Coelho wrote, The Alchemist, which has sold more than 60 million copies worldwide. In the interview, he talks about his new novel, The Winner Stands Alone, and the innovative way in which he is publishing the book. Each week, Coehlo will publish a chapter from the book on his blog, with the entire book to be released in March. Very cool.

Scoble used Kyte Mobile Producer to broadcast the interview — great example of how Kyte enables you to easily produce raw, authentic content.

Kyte Dashboard Now Available!

Today at the NATPE 2009 conference, we are announcing the general availability of Kyte Dashboard, a comprehensive, enterprise-class, content management and analytics solution for the Kyte Platform. Kyte Dashboard is available to Kyte Premium and Professional customers and provides video uploading and management capabilities, multi-level content moderation, and in-depth analytics reporting and visualization. You can view the press release here.

Also at NATPE, we are exhibiting in the “What’s Next Technology Pavilion” along with our strategic investor, Nokia. For those of you that can’t attend NATPE, we’d like to show you a cool video that will be played at the conference which highlights two of our partners in the television industry -- celebrity entertainment show Extra, and the leading broadcast news station in Germany, N24.  Both Extra and N24 have armed their reporters with Kyte-powered Nokia phones to provide audiences with authentic, on location, coverage of major news events, including last week's Inauguration ceremony.

Midem Roundup

Hi Everyone - Several of us from Kyte just returned from the Midem conference in Cannes, France.  The event was a big success for us, starting off with our Universal Music Group announcement, and culminating with an equally exciting Sony Music deal that we announced today. Here are a few additional highlights from the event:



Michael Robertson of MP3.com, who couldn't be there in person due to legal problems with EMI, came in live from San Diego to Cannes via Kyte for the MidemNet keynote panel. This gave everyone a first hand glimpse of the technology and created quite a buzz.... after all, seeing is believing:

Daniel's panel, "Connecting artists & fans – A showcase of services," gave us the opportunity to explain what Kyte for the music industry is all about - connecting artists with fans. Given that the theme of the conference was artist-fan engagement, this was a perfect forum for us.

We were surprised and flattered when several speakers acknowledged Kyte on stage during their various talks, including Courtney Holt, president of MySpace Music, Michael Doernberg, CEO, ReverbNation, and Tero Ojanperä, Nokia's EVP Entertainment and Communities. Thanks guys!

We met a lot of interesting people. One of the most inspiring was JYP, the most successful artist/entrepranuer in Asia. JY is not only one of the biggest stars in Asia, but he puts together super stars like Rain and Wonder Girls. Of course we'd love for him to start using Kyte:

The Midem organizers used Kyte to power their MidemNet vblog and artist video channel. It was great working with them and we look forward to a continued partnership.

Our booth provided the perfect meeting place for folks to get to know us and our technology:

Thanks everyone for all your support!

Sony Music Entertainment Licenses Kyte Platform

Hey Kyte Fans,

We are very pleased to announce that Sony Music Entertainment (SME) has licensed the Kyte Platform for their artists and subsidiary labels in the U.S. and Germany.

You can read the press release here.

SME artists such as John Legend, Alicia Keys, Franz Ferdinand and Raheem DeVaughn have been using Kyte to provide their audiences with various types of content – from authentic, raw video streamed live from a mobile phone while on tour, in the studio, or during a live performance – to professionally produced video.

Today’s announcement with Sony, and our previous announcement with Universal Music Group, means that the two largest labels in the music industry have adopted the Kyte Platform for online and mobile video production, distribution and monetization.

Kyte Improves Quality of Live Streams

Hey Kyte Fans,

We know how much you all love to live stream, so we’ve made some significant enhancements to the Kyte Mobile Producer application that will greatly improve the quality of mobile live streams.

Without getting too deep in the technical weeds, these improvements include:

• Increasing the video capture quality — this allows for superb video quality in optimal network conditions (i.e strong 3G or wifi connection)
• Improved the Quality of Service (QoS) algorithm — optimizes the video quality in poor network conditions (i.e. low 3G or Edge connection), and reduces the occurrence of “buffering” messages for the viewing audience

One of our most active live streamers, Soulja Boy Tell Em, has been doing several live streams today as part of a promotional tour here on the West coast. Check out the quality of his live videos, below.

Most existing Kyte users should have their phones set to “Auto Update” and will get the update the next time they use the application.

Those that don’t have their phones set to “Auto Update,” can get the new application by going to Kyte Mobile Producer on their compatible Nokia S60 3rd edition camera phones and then go to Settings > Update Settings > Check Now. You will then see a message asking if you’d like to download the new version of the application. Simply follow the prompts and you’re all set.

And if you don’t have Kyte Mobile Producer at all and would like to install the app on your compatible phone, point your mobile browser to m.kyte.tv, click “Start Producing,” and then click, “Download Kyte Producer.”

Happy Kyting!